DECADES OF SERVICE - Joseph Hassett of Cummaquid retired this summer as chief probation officer at Barnstable Superior Court. He began working for the Probation Service in 1972 and helped to start one of the first of 25 community corrections centers around the state.

Football depends upon rules, teamwork, and sometimes a well-placed kick.

Probation in the criminal justice system also depends upon rules, teamwork, and sometimes, though only metaphorically, a well-placed kick.

Therein lies the connective thread in the life story of Joe Hassett of Cummaquid, recently retired chief probation officer at Barnstable Superior Court. He was appointed to that post in 1993 after 21 years in probation services in the county’s district and superior courts, and retired on June 30.

Hassett graduated from Barnstable High School in 1960 and earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Connecticut in 1967, majoring in physical education and science. After college, he taught and coached first in Connecticut and then in Waltham.

“I liked mentoring the students,” he said. Then two of his friends went into the work of probation, and told him about a position that was opening on the Cape.

Probation is a specialty in criminal justice, and a probation officer has to have the skills of a social worker, a police officer, and a good parent. Probation, depending upon the crime, can last anywhere from a few months to life.

Hassett had suffered a back injury that ended his career in football in the physical sense. But he loved coaching. Probation involves a lot of coaching. Probationers often come into the court system with issues that reflect a lack of education, poor family relations, and substance abuse. The combination often leads to crime.

Hassett’s work always involved the victim of a crime. “Restitution is very important,” he said. One part of convicted offenders’ probation is to pay back what they have taken from their victims.

“I’ve helped people recover thousands and thousands of dollars” by requiring restitution as part of probation, said Hassett. “The victim is very important.”

One white-collar criminal he supervised, he said, had 55 victims. “It was someone trying to keep up with the Joneses,” who did so by embezzling.

He said that he’s had to tell people that if they can buy cigarettes, they can quit their habit and repay their victims instead.

Hassett and his wife Susan, a former on-air personality for a Cape Cod radio station who now works in marketing for a retirement community, have three grown children, one of whom became a probation officer. A kiddy picnic bench in their pondside back yard attests to the frequent presence of grandchildren ages 4, 5, and 6 – the 15- and 17-year-olds probably don’t fit anymore.

The Hassetts, who celebrated their 44th anniversary this month, met in high school (Barnstable High School, in fact) and married while they were still in college. They hope to travel now, with a special interest in Scandinavia and northern Europe as well as the U.S.

Joe Hassett’s father, Joseph Sr., was one of Cape Cod’s first detectives. The Hassetts display a photograph of him with President and Mrs. John F. Kennedy, whom he was guarding at the airport.

Probation is a very strictly-controlled element of criminal justice. Probation officers can set rigorous conditions for offenders: unannounced home visits; drug testing (80 percent to 90 percent of crime is due to substance abuse, he said); community service (which provides hundreds if thousands of dollars’ worth of work for Cape towns); confinement to home except for work (GPS bracelets are a great help, he said); and participation in programs that address the individual’s needs, such as drug or alcohol counseling, sex offender treatment, or even finishing high school.

Hassett helped to start one of the first Community Corrections Centers in the commonwealth. According to a press release from the Massachusetts Probation Service, there are now 25 of these “one-stop sites where probationers receive substance abuse counseling, drug testing as well as job and educational training.”

“I take a lot of pride in starting that,” said Hassett. “With probation costing eight or nine thousand dollars a year, and incarceration $35,000,” probation saves taxpayers a lot of money, he said.

“Plus,” he added, “we can turn probationers into taxpayers, not tax burdens. We try to make them whole again.”